MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Shutter Island Rated R

Directed by Martin Scorsese.  Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo.

Photo © Paramount Studios
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

Shutter Islandis a big, good-looking suspense movie that is too long, too involved, too explanatory, and too evocative of other films for its own good. 

Based on a twisty potboiler by mystery writer Dennis Lahane (Mystic River), the film takes place off the coast of Massachusetts in 1954. 

U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio), along with his partner Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) are visiting an island mental hospital where a criminally insane patient has mysteriously disappeared.  The missing person, Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), was found guilty of murdering her children before being institutionalized.

If you’re wondering why this is a case worthy of outside intervention, especially since the hospital is surrounded by a large body of water, you won’t be surprised if I told you that there is more going on here than meets the eye. 

There are flashbacks, fantasy sequences, and references to the Cold War, the House Un-American Activities Committee, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, as well as more than a few skeletons in a number of closets. 

There are also nice nods to any number of 1950s era movies, including half a dozen Hitchcock films.  If Shutter Island had clocked in at about 90 minutes (instead of 2 hours and 20 minutes) and scuttled half of the extraneous subplots, this might have amounted to more than an exercise in tedium. 

What I found most offensive about the film was how every single twist and turn of its serpentine plot was explained to us by a character in the movie.  Halfway out of the theater, my wife and I started to pick at the plot holes; by the time we arrived home, there was nothing left at all.

Pitchfork Rating: Two halos. (An A for effort doesn’t matter much with material this weak.)

Three picthforks. . (Scenes with violence and dark content, including child murder and the Holocaust; some swearing; the pervasive smoking of tobacco cigarettes.)

COMMENTS!

Do you have comments about this movie or movie review? Email comments. (Your comments will be posted to our web site.)